The basic premise of “Primal fear” carries all the usual tropes and tenets that make a classic whodunit in the vein of Poirot and Mason: a heinous act of murder, a controversial victim, lawyers with blatantly ulterior motives, a convenient lack of eyewitnesses and the obligatory two and a half block long foot chase. The plot gradually thickens as hitherto unknown motives become clear and fragments of dark pasts are revealed.
The film’s protagonist, Martin Vail (Richard Gere) is initially set up as that vile, self-serving, nihilistically cold cod of a lawyer who will take every measure to cover up a genocide as a rare instance of mass suicide. He naively believes that truth is what you make of it. His first lines paint a concise portrait of his unabashedly cynical character: “When your mother says she loves you, get a second opinion.” In the same scene, he offers his six pence on the hopelessness of the judicial system to a baffled magazine interviewer. “It’s for a cover story, right?”, he clarifies earnestly, before dismissing his secretary with a perfunctory wave.
We follow Vail as he goes about his daily courtroom negotiations. Gradually, his despicable demeanor diminishes, and a much more human, fleshed-out character takes center stage. Someone we can reasonably relate to. By the time a mentally scarred altar boy is charged with the brutal murder of a prominent priest, we have already begun seeing the world through Vail’s eyes. By taking on the difficult role of the boy’s defence attorney, Vail puts himself at great professional risk and instantly transforms into a traditional hero.
Even though the boy, Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton), is the only known person believed to be present at the scene of the crime, with all evidence pointing against him, Vail stands relentless in his defence. And given that Vail has, at this point in the film, become the sole moral centre in a cornucopia of ethically ambiguous characters, we as an audience see little choice but to agree with him.
Martin Vail’s best instances of character development are brought out in his interactions with Janet Venable, the determined and dogged prosecution who always figures out where he’s coming from and continually tries to change his views. Vail sees her as an ideological nemesis, a victim of the bureaucratic machinery. He tries to offer her a way out in several ways: he tells her boss to cut her loose; he tries courting her in a bar; he puts her in a difficult situation concerning a big piece of evidence. Every time, his misgivings about the system are only reassured; each time, he derives motivation from the fact that the defendant is being charged unjustly.
The most pertinent moment in Vail’s dramatic arc is also his most vulnerable one. After a particularly harrowing episode with Stampler, Vail visits his interviewer in a bar. What he says to him there sounds more honest than anything he’s said till then. “I believe some very good people do very bad things. I believe in the basic goodness of people.” Vail has reached a point where his moral confusion closely mirrors that of the audience. We want to believe him now.
There are two climaxes in the film. In the first one, Stampler, the boy charged with the priest’s murder, conspires with Vail to get out of the seemingly unfair trial. This is an ending that provides maximum comfort and minimal thought for the ending. The quintessential courtroom drama where justice prevails, however unconventionally. But when Vail visits Stampler in his cell later that day, Stampler reveals his true identity - the innocent scapegoat was in fact the killer all along. The discovery is enough to shake Vail to his roots, and hence the audience.
In summary, Primal Fear delivers a subversive courtroom drama, a la a 12 Angry Men turned on its head. The arc of the traditional hero has never looked so untraditional.
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